[Guest]

I was just wondering if anyone had DP/DR that was non-drug induced. I remember the exact point in time when I started feeling like this. I was in a depression in HS because of I had lost my girlfriend of 2+ years and was given an article to read about how "we are all dust in the wind." At some moment during reading that article, I felt as if something left me or something inside of me changed.

Over time I noticed the symptoms off and on but never paid a whole lot of attention to them until lately, where I feel like it's starting to take over my life. It started off slowly, where I would question my own existence. Then I started checking my surroundings, and would restate every person's name around me to ensure that I could remember. At times things would feel dreamy but I always just ignored it. It kinda felt like my vision was tunneled or narrow if that makes any sense. I would become afraid that someone would pull the plug on my life at any moment.

Then during the second semester of my first year of law school, I broke down. I was having a plethora of intrusive thoughts, and with them came an increased feeling of depersonalization/derealization. I came home to live with my parents for this summer in between law school years. Things have gotten better on the intrusive thoughts end, but worse on the DP/DR end. I feel as if things seem a dream. Objects sometimes seem two-dimensional. People seem like automatons. The funny thing is I know all of these feelings are bullshit but I can't stop feeling them. I keep wondering whether I exist or whether anything exists, and if so, where does it exist. It's always worst in the mornings. I'm so tired of it and just want it to end. I'm on 50mg of Zoloft and 75mg of Seroquel daily. The Seroquel helps with the intrusive thoughts but doesn't aid with the DP/DR. What makes me the most sad is I always wonder how things came to this. What did I do. Am I making all of this up. I feel like a weak person, but no matter how hard I try or want to, these feelings won't stop. I just wondered if anyone could relate to this.

All of these feelings might be best explicated as follows...
?Anxiety blots out time, dulls the memory of the past, and erases the future. While we are subject to anxiety, we are unable to conceive in imagination what existence would be like ?outside? the anxiety.?

 

[enigma]

Mine was non-drug induced. (If you're talking strictly about illegal drugs, that is.)

e

 

[Guest]

Yea, I'm talking about illegal drugs I guess. I just meant that it wasn't induced by pot or other things or even alcohol. It just came into being at some point as the result of a traumatic event.

 

[Da'Burgh]

Yeah, that's common.

 

[enigma]

In my case, I did just about everything but illegal drugs that resulted in it coming on when I was a teen.

Though there was no single traumatic event that I could really point to that could've had anything to do with it.

e

 

[Milan]

jraffett wrote

I keep wondering whether I exist or whether anything exists, and if so, where does it exist.

Mine is slightly different (or it may be the same feeling except we're expressing it using different language). I feel that I do exist but I can't understand why I am 'I'. What are thoughts, why even think, why have a human body, how do I exist, why die, why have a world, what is this strange material reality around me, or just trying to understand the human experience but in a way that seems to produce negative states. I have this feeling that I'm not in phase or synced up with the experience of self producing feelings that are so odd and different. I try to avoid thinking these things.

 

[Shadow Cat]

Mine isn't drug induced. I've never taken any drugs besides the occasional one for medical reasons.

 

[Guest]

What are thoughts, why even think, why have a human body, how do I exist, why die, why have a world, what is this strange material reality around me

I know exactly what you mean by that. I started flipping out one day when I started wondering what exactly a thought was. Where does it exist? How am I actually generating this thought? Why am I thinking that thought? What's the purpose of thinking the thought? Etc, etc. Then I'll start obsessing about why I do every single thing I do, things that are reactive. I don't know about you, but that shit makes me feel so wierd sometimes. I just want to sit on the beer and have a beer without having to think or feel wound up.

I sometimes wonder if it's all tied into anxiety. Just an anxiety about why we're here and what our purpose is in life. I mean my feelings started from when I read an article about how we as humans are nothing. We've built this/these question(s) up to such a monumental value that they start to consume our lives through fear and anxiety, and make reality seem like a strange place. That's why no amount of logical think necessarily gets you around that feeling of depersonalization -- because the thought has created the feeling, and now the feeling controls the thought. Eventually though I think we can all come around it. If your brain was powerful enough to create the feeling it certainly is powerful enough to "un-create" it. It does comfort me to know that reality is always there, whether I can see it or not. And no matter how many days or weeks or years I have to spend feeling the effects of DP/DR, I believe that things will work out the way they should. Maybe through a combination of expressing, drugs, and therapy we can all get to where we need to be.

 

[bright23]

Have you ever heard of the "science" of memetics?

Look it up, you'll find it very interesting in connection to your above quote. Susan Blackwell wrote a book "The Meme Machine" for Oxford University press. Its very readable and extremely interesting. You might feel a little DP/DR'd after reading her ideas (it's pretty out there and extraordinary) but in the long run I think they are a total relief for me.

 

[bright23]

Sorry, the quote was... "I started flipping out one day when I started wondering what exactly a thought was. Where does it exist? How am I actually generating this thought?"

 

[Milan]

Jraffett,

Looks like were very much alike in the way we analyse thoughts!

Your new here as am I. Only been here a couple of months but really enjoying the board. A couple of links below to posts that I submitted recently detailing more of the stuff I ruminate on and the helpful responses of the lovely people on this board, especially the guru Janine (you should get her book if you haven't already done so).

http://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3347
http://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3316

I know what you mean about feeling weird! That strange, out of body/self, dreamlike feeling you get when deconstruct your self by analysis is by far one of the worst feelings I get and it is always drags his friend fear to the party. At times when the state is really intense I just want to die to get out of that feeling - it's a horrible, filthy feeling that no one should experience. And yet we always go back to trying to figure it out, understand it - just doesn't work.

Bright23 that book sounds interesting but I might save it for a later date when I don't obsess so much.

 

[rainboteers]

Mine is not drug induced.

 

[Sojourner]

Nor mine.

 

[Guest]

What medications are you guys on to help with it? I've been prescribed 50mg of Zoloft and 75mg of Seroquel daily. The Seroquel does seem to help a bit, although I was reading through its adverse effects and 1/100 to 1/1000 patients experience depersonalization as a result. I'm wondering if the Seroquel is making it worse at times. Also, I've heard that anticonvulsants are good at addressing DP/DR and I was wondering if anyone had any experience with that.